


Painted On My Heart

by autopsy_mauve (AlexRoyale)



Category: True Detective
Genre: #silky soft pink salted caramel porn, Flowers and silk and love, M/M, Poems and paintings and sweet silky love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:40:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6398983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexRoyale/pseuds/autopsy_mauve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s January the fourth and all Rust thinks of is springtime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painted On My Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackeyedblonde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/gifts).



December the twenty-sixth up to January the fourth is a rough patch of time for Rust.

Marty sees this. Marty sees almost everything concerning Rust, two years tacked on to the seven they spent as partners and the ten they spent as regrets.

Rust makes his pilgrimage to Glendale like the previous year, and Marty goes along. Their walk through the cemetery is quiet grief and solace. Marty holds his hand all the way and brings flowers.

  
Marty holds his hand on the drive home.

  
Marty holds all of him through the night and into the dawn.

Rust wakes to the scent of fresh flowers. Three roses in a slim vase; one yellow, one orange, one red. He reaches out and touches the petals. Marty’s flowers whisper reassurance.

He smiles into his pillow. It’s January the fourth, and Marty brings him flowers, licorice tea, and crawls back into bed with him until Rust decides to get on with the day.

Rust is full of thoughts and his attention catches the canvas above their headboard - the spray of red maple boughs. He’d thought it as a practice piece, but Marty called bullshit and hung the painting.

It’s January the fourth and all Rust thinks of is springtime.

  
\---

February the first, Marty sifts through his tie collection and finds a rosy length of raw silk among the blues, greys, and greens. It’s too wide to be a tie, and Marty deduces it’s a scarf. It passes across his palms like water.

He finds a twin in his sock drawer. The silk folded tight, like a rose about to bloom.

Marty fixes the knot of his blue tie and smiles. The silk scarf is a question in their shared language. They communicate without problems now, two years down the line from Carcosa.

Words failed them in the past. Silence was a wall neither cared to scale.

After Carcosa, they put each other back together -- both men knowing where the pieces all fit.

  
In the sunlit kitchen, there’s a covered omelette on the counter and a spray of dark witch hazel and bright bluebells in a pink glass vase.

Marty pours orange juice and drinks it staring at the line of polished rose quartz stones on the windowsill.

He finishes the omelette, and rinses his plate in the sink. He’s scheduled to follow a client’s husband for the day, and he’s going alone.

Marty climbs the stairs and knocks on Rust’s studio door.

Rust opens it, and Marty notes his worn t-shirt, baggy black cotton pants, and bare feet.  
Rust is painting steady again these days and Marty wants to work every case solo to give Rust all the time he needs.

Rust is still a fantastic detective. But Marty prefers he paint instead. There’s fewer chances of him being shot or stabbed.

The fan on the ceiling is a blur and the draft that puffs against Marty’s face makes him smile with feigned suspicion.

“Now, I know you quit smokin’ cigarettes, but are you lightin’ up other things in here?”

Rust snorts and goes to a low table of oils and candles and holds a squat bottle between his thumb and forefinger, “Patchouli oil. I’m not smokin’ joints in here, Marty. Smartass. Got no interest in eating my weight in taquitos.”

Marty grins, gladdened by Rust’s reaction, “Wanted to say thank you for the omelette.”

Rust crosses back to Marty and kisses him, “ Best not to go trackin’ people with an empty stomach. You’re welcome. You sure you don’t want me goin’ with you?”

Marty kisses Rust’s temple, “Nah, I tell you what -- I need help, I’ll phone you, okay? In the meantime, enjoy the quiet. What’re you painting?”

“Somethin’ else for the bedroom. Closet wall’s bare. Unless you wanna keep it like that? Don’t have to hang it, could sell it, “ Rust says, and rubs a hand on the back of Marty’s neck.

“Hell, I painted the walls, I’ll leave it you to what you hang on them, “ Marty says.

  
\-----

Marty’s tracking session ends when his client breaches their agreement and confronts her husband in public. Marty’s drinking a cold lemonade and polishing his sunglasses when the two start screaming on the sidewalk outside the apartment complex belonging to the mistress.

He watches and records from the safety of his car while he phones the police to report a public disturbance. Three lives implode in the yelling and the crying while he watches and he feels ill at being a voyeur. His phone buzzes and it’s Rust. Marty says the whole thing is FUBAR and he’s called the police. Rust says there’s other cases and to come home.

Marty talks to the attending officer when the police arrive, and leaves the scene. On the drive home, he calls his errant, hysterical client and gets her voicemail. He leaves a message that her case is a tad compromised, and that they’ll meet next week.

He makes one detour on his way home.

\---

“That bad, huh?” Rust says, when Marty gets in the door. Marty holds out the arrangement of stargazer lilies and Rust smiles.

“Far as I’m concerned,” Marty says, tossing his keys on the counter, “ I got up this morning and went to buy flowers for my partner. I broke up a fight by callin’ the cops and drove home. That is the extent of my day.”

Rust pours two iced teas and hands one to Marty, “Then the day is yours.” He clinks his glass with Marty’s and turns for the hallway.

Marty follows him to the stairs and when Rust gets to the top, Marty asks, “You mind if I watch you paint?”

Rust nods and says, “Door’s open.”

\---

“So, what made you buy the flowers, Marty?” Rust asks, when Marty walks in.

Marty sits on the beaten-up grey lounge couch and sighs, “Shitty day, was drivin’ home and  
thought of you.”

“Surprised you didn’t gift me a cactus, “ Rust says.

“Well, “ Marty says, reclining back on the couch, “this house already has a prickly, enduring bastard. No sense in startin’ a competition.”

\---

The room smells like spring. The air thick with scents of stargazers, roses and bergamot.

Rust at his easel, a work of grace and art himself. Marty watches Rust’s bare feet hook onto the lowest rung of the barstool he sits on.

Marty sips his drink and looks at the antique mirror that stands just over six feet tall. How they’d had a bitch of a time getting it up stairs. It suits the room.

Rust’s chair creaks as he half-stands, “Hey, you mind turning to the right a bit?”

Marty sits up, “You’re painting me?”

Rust shakes his head, “Initial sketch. I’ll stop if you don’t want me to.”

Marty gnaws at his cheek and says, “Hell with it. I don’t mind. Be right back.”

He finishes his iced tea and puts the glass downstairs in the sink.

When he returns, he sits on the couch and says, “Okay, how’s this done? How do you want me?”

There’s a click of some sort from behind the easel and Rust’s puzzled expression clears the canvas edge.

“I want you to sit there for thirty minutes and not fidget, Marty.”

Marty flips Rust off and gets a laugh for his efforts.

“Hold that pose, most natural one I’ve seen, “ Rust says.

“I gotta wear anything...or not wear anything?” Marty says, wearing an expression that only Rust ever sees.

“Wear whatever you like, it’s just the pose I’m after, “ Rust says.

Marty says, “So you’ve drawn models before?”

Rust stands up and goes to the closet, “Long time ago, but yeah.”

Marty sees Rust pull a long robe of deep pink from the closet. The sleeves are long and flared.

His mouth drops, “You went out and bought --- “

Rust says, “Told you at Christmas I was thinkin’ about gettin’ you something pink and silky. Think this works.”

Marty goes to him and takes the robe, a tiny smile on his face, “You went out and bought this. Hell, you got the stones to buy this I’m sure not gonna back down from wearin’ it.”

His last two words to Rust before he goes downstairs to change are, “You heathen.”

\---

There’s laughter as Marty comes back up the stairs. He strides into Rust’s room flapping the sleeves like an orchestra conductor. Rust breathes an inward sigh of relief.

His misplaced fear of Marty being disgusted or offended was just that.

Marty goes back to the lounge couch and arranges the hem of the robe. It drapes all the way to Marty’s ankles. And it fits.

Rust goes to the mirror and removes the sheet-cover, “You havin’ second thoughts?”

Marty shakes his head, more at himself than anything, and says, “Just don’t see the why of it. You could draw anything at all, and you’re drawin’ me.”

Rust leans next to him, “And I’m drawin’ you. Thirty minutes, then you can go change and I’ll donate the goddamn robe to Goodwill.”

Marty clutches the robe closed in mock horror, “The hell you will. You spent actual money on it, so I’m keepin’ it.”

  
Rust moves the easel and sits back down. Marty remarks, “Draw me like one of your French girls, Rust.”

  
Marty laughs when Rust picks up his sketching pencil and gives him the finger.

“Only ladies I drew in Paris were the statues in the cemetery. Drew some more when I went back to Houston after.”

“Oh yeah?” Marty says, crooking an arm under his head and tilting it to watch Rust.

“Some model classes. Different people. Lot harder to draw from life than stone. Makes a better picture though.”

Marty scratches at his nose and puts his arm back in place, “Don’t snark at me for this question, but in those classes do you always have to draw people naked?”  
Rust shakes his head, “Model’s discretion. It’s tough to stand or sit in a too-hot or too-cold studio and not move until twenty or more people have drawn a variation of you without clothes on. Most people I ended up drawing had robes or sheets or tastefully arranged objects that prevented them being naked. If people in the class laughed at any time, they got kicked out.”

Marty mulls over that, and Rust adds, “Met Claire at one class. She wasn’t the model, but she sat across from me for the six weeks I took that class and we hit it off, I guess. Liked talking about art more than talkin’ about myself. She was real good at everything. Nothin’ she couldn’t paint or sketch.”

From over on the lounge couch, Marty says nothing. A rare moment indeed when Rust divulges anything about his past, any past that doesn’t begin with the death of his daughter and Rust’s long, dark race to some sort of finish line.

“She painted a little after we got married and...” Rust taps charcoaled fingers on his cotton-clad knees and coughs, “And if she gave it up, I can understand, but it does keep me going a little. That she maybe kept on with it because it did make her happy, even when I didn’t.”

Marty sits up at that and leaves the couch to hunker down by Rust’s chair, “ I didn’t mean to dig that shit up. Here I am all up in your space and you don’t ever gotta humor my snooping jackass self.”

Rust looks at him, and there’s a small smile on his face, “It don’t bother me now, Marty. I can talk to you. I know that.”

Rust leans down toward him and Marty grasps his hand, turning the palm upward and kissing it.

Marty looks at the easel then, and says, “Cherry blossoms, huh? Kinda looks like the one by the bed, but different tree.”

He stands up and stretches, and Rust motions for him to go back to the couch. Marty sits and takes Rust’s instructions on how to sit so Rust gets the right picture.

“Don’t pretzel yourself, you just gotta hold it for thirty minutes. So I get an idea.”

\---

Marty falls asleep.

Rust laughs to himself at that. That it’s a holdover from their C.I.D days. Sleep being something Marty never allowed himself enough of, and sleep being what Rust could never really enjoy, they didn’t sleep easy except sitting up in cars or chairs.

The bed downstairs is the first bed since his marriage that Rust ever relaxed in. Every other bed was a flat mattress in a drughouse, a flat mattress in a psych hospital, a flat mattress in an empty apartment, in a house behind a bar, on a boat in the ocean.

Rust sleeps well enough on their couch in the living room, and in their bed. Mostly because Marty’s with him.

Rust smudges charcoal lines with his thumb and strikes the mostly from his thoughts. Marty is exactly why Rust sleeps well at all.

  
\---

Marty drowses while Rust changes the light in the room. Marty can feel Rust moving around and knows he’s not to move if he can help it.

The curtains part and sunlight streams in through a gauzy, white layer. Rust adjusts the curtains for the amount of light and when he turns to Marty, he stops short.

Marty’s looking at him, the minute motion of his chin tilting upward and Rust feels lost and found in the same moment.

He’ll tell Marty he’s handsome. That he’s beautiful and dedicate blank and lined pages to just how much beauty Marty brings to his life and even then Marty won’t believe him.

But Marty, robed and sunlit, is beautiful and regal, and has a profile like no one Rust has ever seen.

The closest Rust has ever come to a similar sight was on his way back from Paris, he’d taken the Chunnel to London and gone looking for Shelley.

Percy Shelley’s monument at Oxford University, Rust went there and drifted around with a tour group. The light hit the marble and the whole sculpture lit from within, it seemed. It wasn’t a marble statue, but a living man made of light.

He feels the same now, looking down at Marty. The light rolls across Marty’s body like a wave, drenching him in molten gold. The deep pink of the robe bleeds everywhere in Rust’s vision, bathing Marty in roses and gold.

He forgets the painting. Forgets his sketch. Rust holds Marty with his entire being. Marty with his eyes closed, his lashes gold finery, and the dusky rose flush in his chest and face.

Roses and gold. Marty gives him both.

  
Rust lets Marty pull him close, pull him in like a riptide, like gravity.

 _Don’t understand why you don’t draw yourself,_ Marty says, between kisses.

You’re beautiful.

 _I’m okay_ , Rust says, _seems there’s some people who find burnout junkies attractive._

Marty kisses him and Rust says no more on the matter.

  
\---

Marty reclines with a spread of rosy silk around him, his hips in Rust’s lap. Rust’s hands on him, and deft fingers working him open.

Marty smells lavender, apples and almonds, and the scent of sun-warmed Rust pressed against him. He succumbs to the fullness of Rust in him and feels Rust laugh against his neck, and say, “So, you found it.”

His eyes focus as though he’s drunk, and in a great many ways he is. Heavy-lidded eyes watch Rust snag a length of silk from the floor, where the scarf had falled from a pocket of Marty’s robe. When he’d changed into it, he’d taken the scarf from their bedroom closet for a reason he wasn’t entirely sure of.

He tries to pull Rust closer, closer than he is now. Rust swats at the warm, steady hands on his ass with no real strength, and laughs again.

Rust rolls his hips and Marty groans, sparks lighting up his spine and behind his eyes. The light is rosy red, blood and sunshine behind his eyelids, with tiny stars going nova in unison with Rust’s movements.

Rust ties his hands, so loose it’s laughable, but Marty welcomes it.

 _Handsy motherfucker_ , Rust whispers, _that’s what you are._

Marty’s answering laugh is throaty and deep; Rust only ever hears it while Marty’s in bed with him. When he knows Marty’s having a good time.

Marty’s head lolls back, and Marty sees Rust reflected in the mirror. Sees them together and his brainstem ignites like a fuse.

He can see where he and Rust join. He can see and feel Rust’s calm rhythm. Here, his voyeurism is welcomed. Rust slides into him and the building heat in Marty’s belly rolls up to his chest and down to his knees.

Marty stretches out his bound hands, his body a bent bow, and Rust the bow string, stretched taut along the length of him.

Rust’s hands on his thighs, angling his hips up just so, _just like that. oh like that_ , and Marty spilling a litany from his lips like beat poetry, like prayer. He moans at the sight and sound and feel of Rust fucking into him, carrying him along into bright, searing ecstacy.

Rust’s name melts on Marty’s tongue, salty-sweet and when Rust’s mouth finds his, Marty is lost. Lost in the feel of Rust merging with him. They’re one together and separate, but Marty prefers this. And it’s only for Rust. All of Marty, every thought in his head and breath from his lips, is for Rust.

Marty’s joints fold like origami shapes, and he sees bright, blurred colours, and Rust; smells sandalwood, patchouli, and the shared scent of sweat and sex. Rust’s hand strokes him, heat and pressure, slick and strong and Rust’s hips roll against him like waves against cliffs and Marty cries out.

He feels Rust lean across and press his body along, a steady undulation. Rust reaches out and pulls lightly at the loose knot binding Marty’s hands and Marty comes. His moans stutter out and he smiles, eyes half-shut as Rust rocks into him, steady toward his own release.

There is no time in this room, but Marty knows it exists. He watches the sunbeams move across the floor while Rust presses his face into Marty’s neck and brings rosy tattoos to Marty’s skin.  
Rust is sleepy-eyed and irresistible to Marty at any point, but none more so than now. How he glows and how his hair curls, an art in his own right despite Rust’s caustic refusals.

Marty muses perhaps the eye of the beholder is a truism.

\---

Rust finishes the painting of the cherry blossoms, and Marty hangs it in the studio. He asks Rust, _why all the pink, why the flowers and the stones and the scarves, and the robe?_

And Rust answers that pink reminds him of springtime. Of beginnings. Of growth and revelations.

Rust hands Marty a book of poems by a man named Neruda, complete with a worn bookmark.

  
_“How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,_  
_my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running._  
_So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,_  
_and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans._

 _My words rained over you, stroking you._  
_A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body._  
_I go so far as to think that you own the universe._  
_I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,_  
_dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses._

 _I want_  
_to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”_

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel of sorts to "Crush With Eyeliner" -- It takes place in the months following that Christmas.
> 
> The stanzas Marty reads at the end are from Pablo Neruda's "Every Day You Play.." (1923). 
> 
> The whole poem is Rust and Marty. So much of Neruda's work applies to them.
> 
> And I am romantic sensual Neruda trash.


End file.
